Covent Garden

Covent Garden,Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, City of Westminster, London.Tagishsimonsquare in the City of Westminster, London. It lies just northwest of the Strand. For more than 300 years it held the principal fruit, flower, and vegetable market of the metropolis. Adjacent to the former market site stands the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), home of Britain’s oldest national opera and ballet companies.

Originally a convent garden owned by the Benedictines of Westminster, the site was developed by the 4th earl of Bedford as the cities of London and Westminster grew together along the north bank of the River Thames. It was laid out in the 1630s as a “piazza,” or residential square (the first of its kind in London), to the design of Inigo Jones. Surrounded on three sides by tall houses with an arcaded street floor, the square was bounded on the west by the low, solemn-porticoed St. Paul’s Church.

Statue of Dame Ninette de Valois in front of the Royal Opera House, London, 2007.Russ LondonThe house closed during World War I but reopened in 1919. In 1933–39 the resident company was directed by the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. Closed again during World War II, the house reopened in 1946. The Sadler’s Wells Ballet (founded 1931; later, the Royal Ballet) moved to the theatre at that time. Postwar musical directors included the conductors Rafael Kubelík, Georg Solti, Colin Davis, and Bernard Haitink. The building itself, which continues to serve the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera, was greatly augmented by a southward extension in the 1980s.

There are several other theatres in the surrounding district, notably the London Coliseum (Coliseum Theatre) on St. Martin’s Lane, which is home to the English National Opera, the Adelphi Theatre on the Strand, and the Drury Lane Theatre.